Description: Thomas William Hammond 1854-1935. Born in Philadelphia of Nottingham emigres, and orphaned at the age of four, he came to England with his younger sister Maria and lived for a short while with his grandparents in Mount Street. In 1868 age 14 he enrolled in the Government School of Art. On the 1871 census he is described as a lace curtain designer, and in 1872 he was awarded the 'Queen's Prize for a Design of a Lace Curtain'. Other prizes followed and in 1877 he was again awarded the Queen's Prize, this time for the design for a damask table Cloth. Hammond was an indefatigable worker, and soon began to use his skills as a draftsman to record aspects of the changing town. He began showing his work at local venues in 1882 and in 1890 exhibited for the first time at the Royal academy. His real hobby was black and white sketching in charcoal. He drew about 350 pictures all together mainly scenes of a Nottingham he knew but which has largely passed away today. Extracted from 'The Changing Face of Tom Hammond's Nottingham' by John Beckett which is the introductory essay in 'A City in the Making Drawings of Tom Hammond'. This delightful picture gives us a view of the whole length of the old Trent Bridge with its fifteen arches; irregular, and built at different times, but extremely picturesque. Its parapets were high, and in this it differed very considerably from the pack-horse bridges, which are fairly common throughout the country. As these pack-horse bridges were very narrow, the parapets were made low, because if they had been of normal height a loaded horse could not have passed over them. This bridge was thoroughly restored in 1864, and its management was gradually undertaken, after much dispute, by the town of Nottingham. For a few months in 1811, the old bridge and the new bridge stood side by side, and the spectacle of these two bridges made such an impression upon the minds and speech of our forefathers, that the Trent Bridge is even today referred to as 'The Bridges'. The site of the Victoria Embankment is shown in this picture in its original, unsophisticated condition, and extremely picturesque it was, although far more inconvenient to walk along than the magnificent promenade that we now have. Image and descriptive text taken from 'Nottingham Past and Present', published in 1926.